Читать книгу The Case of the Saddle House Robbery - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: The Earth Is Plunged into Darkness

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Let’s get right to the point of this case. Our ranch was visited, struck, and robbed by a saddle thief.

Saddle thieves steal saddles, right? That’s what this one did. Even though we had been warned, even though I was on the case from the start, the clever rogue managed to . . .

This will be painful. See, I had him cornered in the saddle shed, yet somehow . . . somehow I let him slip away. Maybe you find that hard to believe. Me too. Hard to believe and even harder to accept. I failed my ranch, that’s the bottom line, and it almost got me . . .

But let me hasten to add that he cheated. Who would expect a saddle thief to appear in broad day­light? Thieves are supposed to strike in the darkness of night, but this guy came in the middle of the day. It was a dirty sneaky trick, and no dog would have . . .

Oh, and did I mention the chocolate candy? Maybe not. That was really a low-down dirty trick, using a dog’s natural love of . . . well, yummy chocolate . . .

I’m not sure I can go on with this. It’s too painful.

It happened in the winter, as I recall. Yes, of course it was, the middle of winter. Cold mornings. Short days. Long nights. That’s an accurate description of winter on the ranch.

Me, I was sick of long nights and short days. I mean, the sun didn’t come up until almost eight o’clock! That was shocking, disgraceful. Those of us who work for a living, and who take pride in working long hours, get impatient when the day doesn’t start until eight o’clock.

Those were Drover hours. He loved our winter schedule. It allowed him to sleep his life away. I, however, had better things to do with my life, and on that particular morning at approximately 0716, I decided to take matters in my own hands. Of course I had no way of knowing . . .

Acting on a sudden impulse, I decided to bark up the sun at 0730 instead of waiting until 0800. Pretty bold, huh? You bet it was, but I’d had it up to here with gloom and darkness and short working days. By George, we needed more daylight and I was just the guy to handle that situation.

And so it was that I left Mister Snore-and-Squeak on his gunnysack and began my march toward that little hill just east of the house, the same hill where I barked up the sun every morning of the year.

As you might have guessed, it was dark, very dark, and in the gloomy black of the black gloominess I collided with something—something hairy, warm, and alive, possibly one of the many varieties of Night Monster that roam the ranch at night. We have many of them: Bush Monsters, Shadow Monsters, Thunder Monsters, Moaning Wind Monsters . . . and they’re all pretty scary.

It caught me by surprise. Perhaps I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts that I had, well, neglected to check my instruments. See, I had been running on Smell-o-radar and should have picked up a signal, but somehow I’d missed it.

And I ran into this Hairy Thing in the inky darkness and . . . okay, let’s be honest. It gave me quite a scare. I’m no chicken liver when it comes to defending my ranch against monsters, but I don’t go shopping for trouble either.

Those monsters can be ferocious. A guy needs to pick his fights pretty carefully. Bumping into them in the dark is bad business.

It sent a shockwave all the way out to the end of my tail. I bristled my hair and leaped several feet to the left. Right. Who cares? I leaped, that’s the point.

“Halt! Stop! Who goes there? Stop in the name of the law and reach for the sky. I’ve got this place surrounded!”

Pretty tough, huh? You bet it was, but that’s the way you have to talk to those monsters. Give ’em an inch and they’ll take every nickel.

Having issued the Halt-Stop-Who-Goes-There, I waited for some kind of response. If I was lucky, the monster would run. They do that sometimes, just run away and vanish in the night and you never see ’em again. But sometimes they don’t and a guy never knows . . .

I waited, poised and cocked and . . . well, ready to go streaking for the front porch, if events, uh, got out of control. (Monsters never follow dogs to front porches, don’t you see. I don’t know why, but it’s true.) But then I heard a voice.

“Mmmm, my goodness, I think I’ve just been stepped on by Hankie the Wonder Dog.”

The air hissed out of my lungs. My whole body went limp. I almost fainted with relief. You probably thought it was a ferocious Night Monster, right? Nope. It was just a cat—Pete the Barncat, to be exact, my least-favorite character on the ranch. Have we discussed cats? Maybe not. I don’t like ’em, have no use for ’em at all.

“What are you doing out here, you little sneak? I thought you were a . . . that is, I picked up an odd unidentified sound and rushed right over to check it out.”

“Did you now?”

“Yes I did, Kitty, and at this very moment, even as we speak, I am checking you out.”

“My goodness, Hankie, I’m so impressed.”

“No you’re not. You’re too dumb to be impressed. You’re just a dumb cat, Pete. Why are you lurking out here in the dark?”

I glared daggers into the void of blackness from which his voice had come. I couldn’t actually see him, don’t you know, and more or less had to glare where to guess.

He spoke again. “I’m over here, Hankie. You’re glaring at a rock.”

I whirled around and beamed my glare at the new location. “I know exactly where you are, Kitty, and don’t try to dodge the question. What are you doing out here?”

“Well, Hankie, these winter nights are so long, I sometimes wake up before daylight and walk around.”

“I see. And you think I’m not aware that the nights are long in the winter, is that your point? Ha! For your information, Kitty, our Security Divi­sion keeps very careful records on all that stuff.”

“That wasn’t my point, Hankie.”

“Great. What was your point? You’re boring me, Pete. Could we hurry this along? I’m a very busy dog.”

“I was walking around in the dark. That’s all.”

“Oh, so that’s it. And you think I wasn’t smart enough to have figured that out on my own, huh? Hey, Pete, I knew exactly what you were doing, and I knew exactly why you were doing it. Shall I go on?”

“By all means, Hankie, but I’m over here. You’re talking to a tree.”

I whirled 24 degrees to the left and aimed a gaze of purest steel at him. “Okay, try this on, Pete. You were walking around in the dark because it was dark.”

“Very impressive, Hankie.”

“Hold your applause, Kitty, I’m not through. It was dark this morning because the sun wasn’t up, because it’s winter, Pete. Don’t you get it? No sun, no sunrise. No sun, no daylight. No sun equals darkness. That’s why you were walking around in the dark.”

“That’s amazing, Hankie. And you figured that out yourself?”

I couldn’t hold back a little chuckle. “Heh. You cats have no idea what goes on around here while you sleep. But I’m still not finished. Wait until you hear this last part. It just might knock your socks off.”

“Ooooo! I can hardly wait. But I’m over here, Hankie.”

“Right.” I whirled 12 degrees to the left and gave him a stern glare. “For your information, Kitty, at this very moment I’m on my way to Sunrise Hill, where I will bark up the sun thirty minutes ahead of schedule, thus adding thirty minutes of daylight to the day. What do you think of that?”

He gasped. “I think something just happened to my socks.”

“Ha! Didn’t I tell you? I blew ’em right off, didn’t I?”

“You certainly did, Hankie. And you think you can bark up the sun early today?”

“Hey Kitty, this is my ranch. If the sun wants to rise on my ranch, it’ll rise when I tell it to. We need more daylight, yes? So I’ll bark it up thirty minutes early. It’s a simple process.”

“How fun. But Hankie, I thought J. T. Cluck crowed up the sun every morning.”

I froze. “What? Who told you that?”

“Well, maybe J.T. told me, but I’ve also watched him doing it—many times.”

“Lies, Pete, lies. Number one, the sun must be barked up, not crowed up. Number two, it takes a dog to bark up the sun. Number three, the sun pays no attention to a silly, squawking rooster. And number four, J. T. Cluck is a fraud, a cheat, a liar, and a lying fraudulent cheat. He has nothing to do with the rising of the sun, period.”

I heard the cat gasp. “My goodness, Hankie, I didn’t know all this. And you’re going to bark up the sun earlier than usual this morning?”

“That’s correct, Kitty. Then you won’t have to lurk around in the darkness, and I won’t have to wonder what you’re doing.”

“I’ll be watching, Hankie.”

“Do that, Pete, and feel free to take notes, if you wish. It might improve that tiny mind of yours.”

“Mmmmm yes, but I’m over here, Hankie. You’re talking to the tree again.”

That did it. This cat was trying to play games with me and I’d taken all the trash I could stand from him, so instead of answering or adjusting my position, I issued a growl and launched myself into . . .

BONK!

. . . the middle of a stupid tree, a very large stupid tree, which had looked very much like a cat lurking in the darkness, only it wasn’t. I don’t know how the little pest had managed to . . . phooey.

Did it hurt? You bet it did. It hurt big-time, scratched the soft, leathery portion of my nose and brought tears to my eyes, but they were mostly tears of joy, for I’d had the pleasure of . . . never mind.

It hurt.

Then I heard his voice again, somewhere in the darkness. (Obviously he had been moving around, trying to confuse me.) “Sorry, Hankie. I tried to warn you.”

I paused for a moment, searching my mind for a stinging, witty reply that would wound him even more than the tree had wounded my nose. After thirty seconds of really heavy concentration, I gave it up and had to settle for “Shut up, cat.”

And with that, I whirled around and marched . . .bush? . . . marched into a wandering bush that had somehow . . . hey, don’t forget, it was very dark out there, and that was the whole point of my mission, right? It was so dreadfully dark that no dog in the whole world could have seen where he was going, and before somebody got hurt, I needed to get that sun barked up. Right away. Chop-chop.

And so it was that I managed to snatch a moral victory out of the jowls of defeat and left the cat sitting in the ruins of his own shambles.

I don’t know why I’d even bothered to speak to him. Trying to communicate with cats was a waste of time, a teetotal waste of time, and I had much more important things to do than . . . boy, that tree had really messed up my nose. It throbbed with every step.

Kitty-Kitty would pay for this.

I finally managed to push Pete’s nonsense out of my mind and poured all my vast mental insurgencies into the morning’s mission: barking up the sun thirty minutes ahead of schedule.

It was a very important mission. The world was lost in a great blinding darkness. Only the Head of Ranch Security could save it, and I just happened to be the right dog for that job.

Little did I know that . . . hmmm, better not say.